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I started thanksgiving a little early…after selling so much this week and paying the phone, internet and car insurance…a WIDDLE bit towards the truck repair…(i still owe $400…but i have a few more dvds to sell. ) I had my heart set on roasting a chicken. Most chickens are around $5-$6, so i can splurge a little and get a few meals out of it….

Needless to say the Holiday season has changed the available poultry scene at the store, they are all large and fat and injected with water and hormones and so forth..so i get the smallest cheapest one i can find… I am limited to what my Countertop Oven can hold anyway. Upon dissecting the chicken ..the giblets bag contained…a green heart..not a blackish rotten color but a bright green chlorophyll color – yes i know that the giblets don’t come from the chicken at hand..but i just couldn’t cook that chicken – i actually considered photographing it, but i didn’t want to have that image in my computer and stumble upon it years later and say…oh yeah….hearts can be green…ick.….and it all got exchanged for a chicken the same size with surprisingly NO heart at all in the giblets bag..no liver either just a neck…go figure… regardless this $6 roasting chicken is fatter than the normal chicken available and wouldn’t fit in the pan nevermind the oven. So it was cooked in shifts…the leg quarters then the breasts…i already cut off the back and wings for the freezer/stock ingredients.

In the end I got my chicken fix…and annoyed my roommates who are NOT getting any of my bird.

I usually don’t go anywhere for holidays..i try to join friends who have open houses feeding all the lost souls..and I may indulge in that if i have the gas money this week. But I DO like the cooking part. In previous years i have cooked all my favorite dishes..the ingredients ARE on sale after all…and then stowed them in the fridge so i get the Leftovers, which is one of the great by products of holiday.

One of the uncluttering chores i have been doing is sifting through old computer files..including recipes..most of them are 10 years old or older…including the Brown Rice and Spinach stuffing recipe… i may have to make that soon.

So far this is my favorite broke food. Some of my patented no knead rise pizza dough, a layer of that cheap Parmesan grated cheese in a jar, topped with spinach and then shredded fresh Parmesan. Yummy. Now i know why poor people in the US are fat…hell i have always known that. But you can’t get any cheaper than cheese on bread. I used up all my fresh Parmesan..so tomorrow i think another Tomato Pie is in order, until I run out of mayonnaise.

the Kindle Fire is a quasi android tablet…..android is the freerange operating system that combats the global domination of the ipad and iphones IOS…The reason it is only quasi, is that Amazon WANTs you to buy stuff from THEM for this device…heck the opening flash page is a rotating advertisement ….apparently you CAN spend $15 to turn off the advertisements and it is probably worth it.

Another way Amazon has the throttle cranked way back on the Kindle Fire is how it directly connects to the Amazon APP store..which isn’t the free market Google Android store …not all android apps are available on Amazon’s store…they must really want to squeeze every penny out of this device..

BUT they left the back door open..which is surprisingly very obliging of them. IF you download an Android APP from elsewhere providing is a nice virus free file you can install it on your Kindle Fire simply by dragging and dropping and clicking.

Getting better at referencing the Evernote material which if I keep it neat and organized is perfectly suitable for tablet viewing. Sometimes i use it like a file cabinet drawer and just shove things into it willy nilly.

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and for broke food breakfast….i made my own english muffins…and i think i came very close. I made an especially gooey dough last night..and fried a couple of lumps in the pan after the bacon and before the eggs. I think if i had let them cool, they would be quite acceptable for toasting. As it was I sliced them when warm and they were a little squishy but tough enough to make breakfast sandwiches.
(NO I DIDN’T EAT THEM BOTH COMPLETELY..I HAVE BEGGING ROOMMATES SO I HAVE TO SHARE HALF OF EVERYTHING)

after one good batch of dried apple chips and one bad batch, I successfully dried a couple of tomatoes..and now they are swimming in olive oil.

I have another batch of tomatoes in the dehydrator and i bought some more apples to figure out where i went wrong.

Basically I am trying to recreate some of my favorite things, so i won’t feel so broke.

I need to get back on track but i went a little whacky storing food this week…perhaps i have been possessed by a chipmunk…winter is coming..i started sealing up the windows..i have 2 left to seal…i haven’t turned on the heat…i’m terrified to owe the gas company anymore money.

Meanwhile someone gave me a wonderful gift of a Kindle Fire…i was of course embarrassed, thrilled and grateful…it doesn’t do everything my iphone does, but it certainly does a lot of it…and the screen is bigger..so my eyes are delighted. From what i can see the apps available are limited and more expensive so i am sticking with as much as i can get for .99 or less. take THAT amazon. i will report on it when i can teach it some tricks.

I had never heard of tomato pie….but sadly they never kept it up.. I was intrigued…and eventually one day I made it…and i made it again..so far about 4 times..yesterday..i woke up desiring it..and i had dehydrated my last tomato..so this time i made it with a can of tomatoes..and shit it was still yummy. We never had a lot of back of the box, white trash, middle america, and white bread recipes growing up in my house..i guess over the years I am discovering them one at a time…i remember the first time i made that mushroom soup, green beans and fried onion thingy…that was damn tasty if you put the sodium count out of your mind.
I will have to make sure i always have the ingredients for this one in the cupboard.

My personal shortcuts are to precook the onions for a minute or two in the microwave and sprinkle some grated cheese under the tomatoes..one can never have enough cheese. Is the mayo supposed to melt? it never really changes texture or consistency..but still tastes yummy.

I am one of the few americans who finds mac and cheese unappetizing..the yellow mac and cheese in a box even makes me ill looking at it in the grocery store..somehow it brings to mind some bad childhood memory. probably something i ate or refused to eat in a school cafeteria once…or many more onces… as broke food goes you can’t really knock it..it will keep you alive i guess…but would life be worth living?

In college I remember it sold 4 for a dollar..now it’s probably more than that..yet still overpriced. It’s pasta with a packet of salty dried dairy powder….of course I will eat the BETTER and more expensive kind..the 2.99 a box organic, Parmesan or white cheddar type..the kind without ALL the heaps of salt. So, i am attempting to recreate IT for a reasonable price.

I found a cheap grated cheesey blend for half the price of all the green boxes. I am actually looking for the qualities of the cheap cheese – finer grain, more bland, less tang, so that i can control the taste and saltiness. I also want it to be frugal enough to use it to make the cheese sauce.. I can make a cheese sauce from a cooked white sauce base, but i’m looking for quick, just like the box type.

starting with 1.5 cups of small shells just like in the box, I intend to add milk and a smidgen of butter just like on the box. To make my instance sauce I started with 3+ tablespoons of grated cheese, 1 tsp of basil, 1 of parsley and hoping to encourage a nice smooth sauce I added a tsp of corn starch.

As I discovered I think i could have left out the corn starch as the cheese and added more milk, the starch on the shells was plenty. I should sit down and hammer out the math..but i don’t want to.

Still eating the canned meats from the dollar store. Today’s dinner was the Van Camps Kippers, normally I eat the Brunswick brand…but the Dollar store has the Van Camps for half the price and the can says it’s a smidgen more product. The van camps expire in 2014 and the Brunswick in 2015 go figure.

And surprise surprise..a canned kipper is a canned kipper. I am going back to grab more of those little fishies. By the way that cooked Pink Good mashed up with some relish on crackers was shockingly good.

I got a dehydrator from freecycle. one of the few gadgets i have never played with. It’s about 14 years old but the condition is great and the model is still sold for about $50.

And it is rather idiot proof, i like that in a gadget. I had $15 dollars burning a hole in my pocket for the last few days, i sold a couple of books locally. I spent some of it on candy for the tenants, and i spent the rest on a few apples and a tomato.

I don’t have great ambitions yet, i will start slowly..i like apple chips, so i will try dehydrating some apples. I should have gotten this sooner, the local orchard usually has an apples by the box sale in September. As it is they are a little pricey for turning into chips. But a damn sight cheaper than ACTUAL apple chips. Apparently you can even make banana chips.

I doubt I will become one of the serious prepping fools, but there have been times in recent memory when i didn’t eat some fresh food item fast enough and it went all brown and squishy. I think i will start cruising the bruised fruit and vegetable rack and just keep things little baby running.

The next things i have to buy are the oxygen absorbers….i found out what is ACTUALLY inside of those little packets…apparently RUST…seriously RUST, as well as salt and some vermiculite which probably has moisture all to feed the RUST grains which eats the oxygen. Isn’t SCIENCE wonderful?

So the dried fruit and veg go into the jars along with the oxygen packets and the jars go in the closet and when i finally become homeless and am living in a cardboard box, i will have apple chips galore.

Okay i finally broke off with the Survivalist forum ..i was spending way too much time on it…i posted this marvelous anti romney video from Joss Whedon and i got reprimanded because somewhere in it, he said two words ‘reproductive rights.’ I said fuck you fascists and the horse you rode in on. Too many paranoids mutherfuckers anyway.

Doesn’t mean i will stop putting crap away in the closet for a rain day..which is odd because it’s always raining in my life…right now i have about 20 bucks to my name and a negative bank balance, nearly no gas and a storm bearing down. Oddly i am not panicked at the moment…catch me tomorrow. While putting things away in the barn….i poked my nose into my travel trailer..it’s still there. I haven’t moved it in forever..i just can’t bear the thought of selling it. If i ever become homeless i will be sleeping in it…regardless i pulled out the 2 battery coleman lanterns…the batteries expired in 2008 and they still work..go figure.

I also opened up a tin box i had forgotten about and found a cache of bug out food. I don’t even remember putting it together..it must have been in 2006. Anyway..the only food that was inedible were the little boxes of raisins..and to be fair they were just a little dry…the pop tarts were perfect…the instant mashed potatoes taste just like they are supposed to..i think…i’m not into instant food..but the instant chocolate pudding was out of this world! 6 years in an airtight box didn’t do anything to it…i must remember to buy more pudding. I will eat the rest of the foodstuffs and then refill the box – don’t to waste a perfectly good airtight container. This time i will try to keep track of it.

I now regret tossing all the tin cookie boxes i have ever had in my life. My mother’s generation saved them like they were gold ingots, i used to use those round danish cookie tins for cables and probably still have some in the basement. So far the only special items i may buy when i can afford it are these things called Oxygen absorbers..little packets like silica gel packs that remove the oxygen from long term storage containers. apparently they are all the rage with the ‘prepper’ folks..and they seem to be something i can afford.

meanwhile i still have some 6 year old pop tarts and pudding to tied me through this oncoming storm. 8)

It’s that time of year…time to get shut up in an ‘old dark house’ during a torrential storm, along with a house full of loonies. Old Dark House..one of the more obscure James Whale productions is well worth watching..over and over. I wish i had more like minded friends…i’d throw a theme party a la Rocky Horror Picture Show…. the film has marvelous dialogue just ripe for quoting out of context….”No beds! they can’t have any beds!” and there’s a scene around a meal which fit in perfectly with the concept…”Have a potato!” “thank you i should love potato!” …we have constant wind and rain, a few merry musical rhymes, and a pyromaniac, ….”we make our own electric light here…and we’re not very good at it, don’t be alarmed if they go out all together.” so we have flickering electric lights, and candles.. we could use spray bottles to spray people in the face when they get a line wrong. Hey… i have a sick sense of fun.

MY DVD player died…i did a necropsy and there was no saving it. …i went without one for a week…still don’t have the money to replace it, but some generous soul gave me a very decent one…i am trying to make up for lost time with my Halloween viewing. It doesn’t seem to have an all region unlock, so i will end up buying another one eventually. can’t have all my UK DVDs go to waste. Funny how i want to watch some of these MORE now that I can’t, than before when I could.

Another thing I’d buy if i had more money was a copy of the original book. The film is one my 10 favorite films and I generally buy the books that go with such things. The internet does make things hard to come by sometimes.

Halloween’s coming..so it a tropical storm named Sandy…the CERT team has yet to be activated to the appropriate preparations needed for setting up shelters and such…i tried kickstarting it with the Mayor’s office but now that the police chief has CERT under his boot, he’s not interested in what anyone thinks. which at first bothered me a lot..but last night I let it go, i will just drop out. I have plenty to keep me busy. And in this particular storm…who knows i may be busy keeping myself afloat anyway.

I’m going to batten down my own hatches and keep the homefires burning..figuratively. no pyromaniacs here.

I guess i figured out why Ball plastic canning jars disappeared last year. The 16oz showed up in a 4 pk for about 3.50. Then couldnt be found again. The new 16oz comes in a 2pk for under $4. But the design is completely different, the lid now has a sort of one piece gasket construction. I guess they got complaints about the other design with i admit was untrustworthy. But now they are twice the price. Good thing i only need a few. When i make a stew or soup i put one or two of these in the freezer. Eventually i will have an assortment in there to choose from. But i am actually eating from this larder.